Llyn Foulkes: Fifty paintings, collages and prints from Southern California collections: A Survey exhibition-the years 1959-1974 Newport Harbor Art Museum, September 20 through October 20, 1974.
Board of Trustees: Davud H. Steinnetz, President; Ben C. Deane, Vice President; Leon Lyon, Vice President; David S. Robertson, Vice President; Henry T. Segerstrom, Vice President; Mrs. Richard Steele, Secretary; Mrs. C. Thomas Wick, Assistant Secretary; Owen E. Metzler, Treasurer; George L. Argyros; Mrs. Johnston Ballard; Mrs. Ernest E. Bryant, III; HarryG. Bubb; Ben C. Deane; John E. Dwan, II; Leighten French; Mrs. Walter D.K. Gibson, Jr.; Jack Glenn; Herbert A. Gold; Robert Guggenheim; Warren D. Hancock; Frank C. Harrington; Rolla R. Hays, Jr.; George Jeffries; Mrs. George Jeffries; Mrs. Richard S. Jonas; John F. Kelsey; Branch P, Kerfoot; Mrs. Branch P. Kerfoot; Mrs. Winslow S. Lincoln; Richard Lyon; Mrs. Robert J. Marshall; T. Phillips Morgan; Jack W. Smock; Mrs. Henry Somers; George R. Sturgis; Mrs. John J. Swigart; Mrs. Daniel S. Thompson; Mrs. Glenn Turnbull; Mrs. Charles Ullman; Mrs. Donald Washburn; Mr. Ernest C. Wilson, Jr.; Mrs Edgar B. Witmer
Turstee Emeritus: Mr. Richard H. Winckler.
Staff: James B. Byrnes, Director; Betty Turnbull, Curator of Special Exhibitions; Phyllis J. Lutjeans, Gallery Administrator; Jean Smock, Membership Secretary; Sue Henger, Registrar; Jane Todd, Membership Assistant; Brian Forrest, Installation and Security
Acknowledgements
Our museum is deeply indebted to art critic Ms. Sandy Ballatore who not only worked with artist Llyn Foulkes and the David Stuart Galleries which represent him, locating and identifying many of the works selected for this exhibtion, but also volunteered her services to conduct the interview which provides the introductory text of this catalog.
Throughout the 1960's and 1970's the work of Llyn Foulkes has been featured in many one-man and group shows in museums and galleries in the Americas and in Europe, so it is not surprising to find that he is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum des 20 Jahrehunderts in Vienna, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and, in California, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the museums of art in Pasadena, La Jolla and at Stanford University. However, during the seventeen years Foulkes has worked, taught and exhibited in Los Angeles many of his important paintings have also been acquired by Southern California art collectors and institutions, which has made it possible to select from these sources fifty major works spanning the years 1959 through 1974.
In choosing the paintings, an effort was made to achieve a balance between Foulkes' earlier heroic-scaled "rock," "post card," and "animal" subjects of the period 1960 to 1969 and his current series featuring small, framed, intensively provocative "portraits" bearing inscriptions or dedications.
We offer our sincere thanks and express our appreciation to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for its continuing cooperation and support of our exhibition program. We are alos pleased to acknowledge the contribution of services by the David Stuart Galleries and the James Corcoran Gallery in obtaining loans. We are especially grateful to the following private collectors, many of whom are longtime friends and supporters of this museum , as well as generous and frequent lenders to our exhibitions: The Asher Family Collection, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Blankfort, Peter and Ellie Blankfort Clothier, Fiedel and Danieli, Ronald Dunlap, Mr. and Mrs. Monte Factor, Sterling Holloway, Mr. and Mrs. Ward Kimball, Jack Nicholson, Mrs. Virginai Shirley, Nicholas Wilder, and Diana Zlotnick.
My personal thanks to Museum Registrar Sue Henger for her assistance in compiling and editing the catalog. -James B. Byrnes, Director
Forward
The career of Llyn Foulkes spans the 1960's and 1970's, reflecting Los Angeles art history but more importantly, presenting Llyn Foulkes, the man. His work has always been unique and personal. Even during the sixties when other L.A. artists were producing work that was psychologically cool, concerned with formal attitudes and synthetic materials, Foulkes was investigating reality, expressionism and serial imagery, many times within the same painting.
Throughout his life both art and music have been modes of expression for Foulkes. Within each medium he works intuitively rather than intellectually, emotionally rather than formally, always devising his own systems that ignore or defy convention. To discuss his work in a context that excluded his personality, his frustrations and successes would be as useless as analyzing Van Gogh's paintings and not his mind or his emotions.
Foulkes' recent work is a culminating success for him-resutant from many years of questioning his life, his painting, his very being. In an effort to portray Foulkes as directly and honestly as possible in the straightforward spirit of his new work, the following information is presented in interview form, the dialogue occurring in August 1974. -Sandy Ballatore.
[p. 1] An Interview with Llyn Foulkes
"Foulkes is a powerful, strong and gripping image maker of Baconian horror . . . [his] absolute refusal to allow good taste in painting to overtake his personal sense os what painting is gives his art a raw and unnerving effect." -John Coplans, 1963
S.B.: Coplans' statement seems still to be valid in view of your recent work. Is it?
L.F.: It's not as valid as it was, and the work now is not the same thing at all.
S.B.: Many people saw your new pieces felt that they were products of insanity. Is the artist crazy?
L.F.: Yes, but that's the difference. I'm not crazy. What I'm saying now in my work is actuality. I'm no longer working out feelings that I am unaware of. My feelings are translated into what they were meant to be.
S.B.: Your images are controlled, directed consciously?
L.F.: What Coplans saw in 1963 was a very naive person who wasn't sophisticated; not really having much knowledge of his environment. I was a kid pouring out his feelings. Still, they were good paintings.
S.B.: The very early ones (1962 and before) do look as though they are unconscious struggles. They have a strong link with abstract expressionism and yet are trying to be more than abstract expressionist paintings. I can see the cross symbols and obliterated faces even then.
L.F.: Not everything in a particular painting really meant anything to me. It had a lot to do with knowing how to put a picture together, structure and design combined with a great deal of feeling. I wasn't able to put the product and my feelings and conscious self-awareness together at the same time., but my own awareness of what was happening in the paintings was not part of it.
Then (1963) an article came out in Artforum and many more people responded to the paintings. I got a great amount of publicity, recieived the first Contemporary Art Council Award from the L.A,. County Museum of Art, had a one-man show at the Pasadena Art Museum and collectors started buying my paintings. Suiddenly I had a very big name.
I joined the Rolf Nelson Gallery in 1963 and U.C.L.A. asked me to teach. Me! I had never graduated from an art [p. 2] school or anything, but they had seen the publicity. All through school I was the kind of person who when called upon would get embarrassed and not able to talk. I was so self-conscious, but I had to teach. I had driven a taxi for a year. So I got throgh it. I stayed for six years.
At that time I was very insecure about my paintings, reading all that publicity, being built up and being given credit for vastly more knowledge than I actually had, for knowing what my feelings actually were. When I started thinking about what all these people were saying about me, I became extremely self-conscious. I started repeating myself, imitating myself.
That is when I grabbed onto the rock image as a symbol of security. I established even more security for myself by doing monochromatic paintings. I thought I still had a good product there: and then I also had the security of teachihng at U.C.L.A.
In 1969 I had a show at David Stuart Galleries and all the paintings were rocks; like Irving Blum had told me nine years before about the blackboard and chair painting, "Do ten more of those and I'll give you a show."
But the paintings only worked on one level, and much too strongly. I was dissatisfied with the work and I knew it wasn't saying what it could. At that time the bottom dropped out of everything and my job at U.C .L.A. ended. The only thing I had left was music. I was hitting the drums and working as an accompanying musician, but decided to go into therapy. I also stopped the music then.
I was in therapy for a year and the music again became extremely important. I see music and paintintg as being valid self-expression for me. If art is expression- if art is feeling, if those words are true, then it should mean that anything the artist is expressing or feeling is valid.
S.B.: Will it be art?
L.F.: That depends on the viewer, the public. For the artist to say it's art is something different. He knows what it is. He knows it's expressing something of himself; but to put a label of ART on it is an attempt by others to put it in some kind of order. That's how we attempt to undertstand everything, by ordering it. The levels of meaning can get very deep. Some people make art on the first level and make it very well. It can be beautiful.
S.B.: You are saying that the first level, as you see it, is one of only visualness.
[p. 3] L.F.: Yes. To me, that kind of art is saying, "I only have eyes and I can see. I have no ears. I have nothing else. I do not feel."
S.B.: And the second level?
L.F.: . . . is an object plus feeling, emotion. The third level is usually missed . . ."
S.B.: Which is . . . ?
L.F.: Why did he do it? An artist is a person doing something. Man can think and has reasons for everything he does. If he does not express those reasons, he has failed. He must know what he is saying. Through therapy, I began to understand much more of myself and my painting.
The last show (David Stuart Gallery, 1974) was turned out very quickly-in a matter of four months, consisting of fifty-five pieces. I had committed myself to a show. I really wasn't sure of the work and at the same time the music started happening. I started out with a washboard and a horn and it grew into a fantastic looking machine. With it, I am expressing myself on many different levels.
S.B.: Is that actually possible with painting-to communicate as broadly as music does?
L.F.: You can express many more levels of feeling with other media-films, for example. Many people, including artists, go out and see movies, but how many people go out and see what artists do?
Art is becoming a museum of the past, revealing how little of ourselves we've expressed. Now we see things really happening-on television, in films, in the press and in reality. Art can't be static and keep up. It has to do something. It has to stimulate a reaction. People should say, "That's really great!" or that's really horrible!" Then something is actually happening. But when the audience is apathetic, tha's bad. Artists are going to have to express themselves a hell of a lot more; maybe even have to stop calling themselves artists. They impose limits on themselves and you can't do that.
S.B.: Limits arise from insecurities and the habit of trying to satisfy others first-before satisfying themselves. They have one eye on the market, current trends, dealers and critics, and only one eye on themselves. To me, their work reflects their unsureness.
L.F.: There are a lot of unsure people around. Nobody wants to make a wrong move. Everyone-artists, writers, dealers-wants to be identified with the big boys. That's the logic of any kind of system. [p. 8]
[p. 12]
S.B.: But that doesn't help anybody and just insures the production of a lot of boring art. I see your work as a refusal to compromise your intuitive impulses for any reason-marketing, inclusion in a movement, etc. But at the same time I know you are interested in your audience, in their acceptance of your work.
L.F.: Yes. I'm not trying to say "This is beautiful." Anybody can learn to make something that is really beautiful.
S.B.: I see work by well-known artists that seems self-satisfied, beautiful, predictable. It does not push at all or question anything. Your works intrigue me because they break so many rules, purposely, compulsively. They go far beyond art-making. For example, using the backs of frames (not a new idea but a compelling one) and painting the backgrounds in such a way that the hard and awkward line around each head deforms the skull; also slapping shapes across the eyes and face and mutilating the skin with a grafitti-like disrespect to subjects normally accorded dignified handling. Your habit of scrawling personal thoughts and messages on the surfaces of "paintings" raises the question of respect/non-respect for art, artness. preciousness.
Do you fee; any need now to make art, or just make music?
L.F.: I don't know. It may come out in the form of a play, or a film. I just don't know.
S.B.: It is reassuring to know that you are not hung up on product-making as the only valid "art."
L.F.: Well, there can be good product-makers. You must appreciate them on that particular level. I just think that as artists, they are not expressing as much as they could. I feel they're holding back. I want something more out of it.
For example the rock paintings were products that played on the first or second level. It wan't until the David Stuart show this year that the work, the feelings became something else. Some artists understand their motives but try to hide them; they become esoteric. If there are no hidden meanings, these are obvious references. I think the artist must show everything and people can take it or leave it.
S.B.: You are absolutely and purposely not being esoteric? That means that you do not allow a writer the opportunity to decipher your visual code and appear to be discovering all your hidden meanings. If there are no hidden meanings, there are obvious references.
What were the sources of the imagery that is repeated in your earlier work-the cow, the rocks, the postcard?
L.F.: The images came about very strangely. I didn't even know the reasons for them myslef until later when I looked at the paintings again. When I taught, I began examining my own work.
The cow and the rock images were influenced by the "Rock" in Eagle Rock, California. One day I drove by it and saw it as a cow's skull. Near it was a black and orange striped construction sign that said , "Hood Construction Company." I realized the earliest double-image painting called Mt. Hood, Oregon had orange and black stripes.
The postcard paintings (early 1960's) were still self-conscious. The first in that series were the best. That was the case with all the work that evolved in series form. The postcard paintings were dark, evidence of my depression. Also, I wanted it to look like a photograph and I denied the surface.
S.B.: But simultaneously you drew attention to the two-dimensionality of the surface by writing, scribbling, adding flat areas of color or stripes and repeating images serially.
L.F.: In the portrait series I emphasized the surface even more by using frames.
S.B.: Your frames break another rule of "high art" ideology in that they are important to you at a time when painting to be serious must work independently, must be more than a framed bit of decoration. However, your frames and small scale put the new paintings into the realm of Dadaist objects; they are surrealistic in their emotional impact accomplished without illusionism. You point out horror with fantasy but reality which forces your audience to consider that the banalization of horror is part of their everyday lives.
L.F.: The new work is a statement about the horror in the news-the Manson killings, assassinations, etc. Actually it started with a small painting in 1960 called "Medical Box." It was a box containing a figure with blood running down his face. I'd been in a mortuary once and saw a corpse with the skin cut from his skull and the top of his head and flipped back over his eyes. It was so horrible I laughed.
My work is not intended to shock people; it is just a statement. Actually, I'm not trying to make art.
Biographical Data
Llyn Foulkes was born in Yakima, Washington, November 17, 1934.
Education:
1955 Central Washington College of Education, Ellensburg, Washinton: Fine Arts and Music
1954 University of Washington, Seattle Fine Arts
1957-59 Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles
Teaching Positions
1965-71 Assistant Professor of Art in Residence, University of California at Los Angeles
1971-74 Resident Painter, Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles
Honors and Awards:
1959 Chouinard Art Institute: First Award for Painting
Chouinard Art Institute, First Award for Drawing
1963 The San Francisco Museum of Art: First Award for Painting, The San Francisco 82nd Annual Exhibition
1964 Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Contemporary Art Council New Talent Purchase Award
1967 Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paolo, Brazil: Represented the United States at the 9th Biennale.
Museum of Modern Art, Paris, France; First Award for Painting, Medal of France, representing the United States at the 5th Paris Biennale
One-Man Exhibitions
1961 Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles
1962 Pasadena Art Museum
1962, 1966 Rolf Nelson Gallery, Los Angeles
1964 Oakland Museum, Oakland, California
1969, 1974 David Stuart Galleries, Los Angeles
1970 Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris
Group Exhibitions1960-1973 Thirty-five exhibitions in Los Angeles, Pasadena, La Jolla, Richmond and San Francisco, California, as well as New York, Chicago, Portland, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Vienna, Sao Paolo, etc.
Public Collections
Art Institude of Chicago
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Stanford University Museum
The Oakland Museum
Pasadena Art Museum
La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Attew
Museum des 20 Jahrhunderts, Vienna
Museum of Modern Art, Paris
1974, Newport Harbor Art Museum, 2211 W. Balboa Blvd., Newport Beach, California, 92660